Landing on Venus: Past and future

Abstract

We briefly describe the history of landings on Venus, the acquired geochemical data and their potential petrologic interpretations. We suggest a new approach to Venus landing site selection that would avoid the potential contamination by ejecta from upwind impact craters. We also describe candidate units to be sampled in both in situ measurement and sample return missions. For the in situ measurements, the “true” tessera terrain (tt) material is considered as the highest priority goal with the second priority given to transitional tessera terrain (ttt), shield plains (psh) and lobate plains (pl) materials. For the sample return mission, the material of regional plains with wrinkle ridges (pwr) is considered as the highest priority goal with the second priority given to tessera terrain (tt) material. Combining the desire to study materials of specific geologic units with the problem of avoiding potential contamination by ejecta from upwind impact craters, we have suggested several candidate landing sites for each of the geologic units. Although spacecraft ballistics and other constraints of specific mission profiles (VEP or others) may lead to the selection of different candidate sites, we believe that the approaches outlined in this paper can be helpful approach in optimizing mission science return.